The rumbling came from the sky, and lightning crawled between the clouds.

Warmages understood that the storm was not natural and began pulling the sky down to prevent the spell from having the cohesion required to fire.

And they did, which confused them, they could tell that the spell was ready to go off, yet it hadn’t.

The spiked thing floating above the town also made no more moves.

No army came out, they saw no defenses on the walls, just the new banners.

A black banner showing a skull with a crown of fire and eyes that were spiked like the sun.

A broken chain made a circle around the skull.

The commander of the army was unsure what to do. Harlan was the scariest thing one could be, an unknown, a very powerful unknown.

“Sir, what should we be doing?”

“Keep spells ready, but wait, he didn’t use that spell, we should figure out why. My predecessor died having no understanding of their enemy, I do not intend to repeat that mistake.”

30 minutes passed.

“Are they escaping? What are they planning?”

“Spatial lock is still in effect, they couldn’t have used gate.”

“It doesn’t make sense, he cut down our men without hesitation before he even knew what we were or how much trouble he was getting into.”

“Retreat.”

“What?”

“This is now a blockade, their resources can’t last them more than a month if he feeds the slaves as much as he does a person.”

“Commander, it would be more glorious if we-”

“Bear in mind what the first word from your mouth was.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Yes, commander.”

The enemy forces backed away to set up camp, and the spiked thing stopped floating.

Inside of the town, Mercedes was baffled.

“How did you get them to back off?”

“Either their leader is a very cautious man, or they saw what I was doing. They intend to capture me, and they did not counter my magic, so I will go with the former.”

“What were you doing then?”

“To someone who does not know magic, it wouldn’t be worth explaining, and I still don’t trust you.”

“That was uncalled for. I apologized and promised that I wouldn’t do it again.”

“Words mean little, actions change things, you have been good on action, and I have given you some trust by letting you command every golem provided it doesn’t violate a command from me.”

“Yes, the same privilege you’ve given to Joan.”

“Yes, it is a privilege. Do not forget that, or that it can be revoked.”

“I dislike how serious you are now.”

“I am in the middle of a siege.”

“A siege with them making camp for the night?”

“I have a plan.”

“It is hard to be an advisor when I don’t know what you are doing.”

Her tone was more mocking than anything.

“Are you upset that I don’t trust you, or that I rejected you?”

“We Dague are known for our beauty. I look just like the princess, and you didn’t even have the courtesy to blush.”

“This conversation is done, never speak of it again.”

“Oh? So you are bashful?”

“This is not the time for banter.”

“And how should I know when it is the right time? Because I said nothing wrong before and you didn’t even tell me what I said that upset you so much.”

“You made no mistake then, that was my problem. I am sorry if you felt that I lashed out unjustly.”

“I’m sorry that you were offended, you might as well spit on me if you are going to say that.”

“Do not tempt me.”

“Where did your kingly charisma go?”

“There is a time for a king, and there is time for a warrior. For the record, you are a beautiful young woman, but I just don’t care.”

It was just past 3 in the morning when the first man thought something felt wrong.

“There is an eerie fog here, it isn’t natural.”

The guard spoke to a warmage.

“We dispersed the storm, but that water had to go somewhere. It was either we let it out as rain or we spread the clouds from the sky downward to prevent them from having enough charge to form dangerous bolts. Give it a day and the wind will clear the area.”

“This feels wrong, why do you think the commander said to retreat?”

“Did you hear what this man did?”

“I know he killed a Cast and he is an unregistered mage.”

“He killed a Cast using brute force, ripped the mace out of his hand and beat him to death with it after tossing him around like a paperweight. And the Order of Blue doesn’t even want to register him, they are waiting until they know what he is and why he is here.”

“Are they doing it because they know he made us his enemy?”

“You are not a mage, so you wouldn’t understand. But the orders are one of the few that can oppose our emperor, and they are the only ones who can run an organization that crosses borders as it does.

They wouldn’t care if this man killed the king of Lith, they do not deal in unknowns like him.

Suddenly appearing as if he was a spirit and then picking a fight with us.”

“Alright, but why did we retreat?”

“Because, you ore for brains, we don’t deal in unknowns. He had magic ready to go, something big enough to dent our army, and we have little idea what he has inside of the city but reports said he turned bodies into new soldiers.”

“A necromancer?”

“Yes, perhaps that is what he is. Or perhaps it is worse. Either way, a week without food and the people will beg to come out and surrender, then we will have hundreds if not thousands of hostages to use against him.”

“But, there are our citizens.”

“Everyone left inside is a sympathizer or a slave, he let everyone who wished to leave do so.”

“The fog bothers me.”

“What is your hold up with this fog?”

“It’s wrong, it’s eerie, and neither of us knows why it’s here.”

“It's here because we had to pull the sky down to prevent the clouds from holding a big charge.”

“Is that how spells like that are normally countered?”

“I need to see the commander.”

Along the way to the commander's tent, he wasn’t affected because he was Cast, poison didn’t work on them. But their beastkin soldiers suddenly felt under the weather, and the Cast would not notice, because they cared little for them, and the beastkin would not admit it, because they knew the Cast wouldn’t care.

“Commander, something is wrong.”

“What?”

“Why didn’t that man cast his magic?”

“I’ve been thinking about that, perhaps he intended to scare us, to let us know that he could’ve done it?”

“What if the plan from the start was for us to counter it? That spell was massive, but its cost would’ve been taken out mostly when the spell was fully cast in the form of gathering the lightning inside of it.

We pulled down a massive amount of clouds here, over our camp.”

“What would he gain from that?”

“I suggest we move forward or backwards, but we leave this fog behind.”

“Master Warmage, do you have any basis for this? Why not dispel the fog with air magic.”

“Apologies for bothering you with this.”

“I will keep this in mind, it is better to know that my soldiers can come to me if they believe there is a problem than not. If the fog cannot be cleared, then we know we have a problem, at which point return to me and we can continue this conversation.”

Joan made her way to Harlan’s office, but hesitated to knock.

“Come in.”

She did as asked.

“How did you know?”

“Because I know. What can I help you with?”

“Your majesty-”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Call me sir, wait until I have a crown and a throne to call me a king.”

“Sir, I don’t mean to question your judgment-”

“Feel free to always question my judgment, no king rules without people he can trust to tell him he is wrong.”

“Why have you not done anything about the army at our doorstep? You’ve told us that we should simply guard the inside and watch for sneak attacks.”

“Because, I won an hour ago.”

“What?”

“The beastkin are dead, the Cast don’t know it yet.”

“How could they miss that?”

“Because they are still walking around and standing guard. I put them to sleep and had artificial spinal spiders take over the bodies. From what I’ve been told, and what I’ve seen, they treat organic life as lesser and replaceable because they aren’t able to live as long as them, I am banking on that fact and expecting them to not notice.”

“How did you get them in?”

“Holes in the ground, they would’ve noticed large ones, but ones that looked to be from animals and were already there shouldn’t be an issue. The spell I made was also never a heavenly fury, that was just an illusion. And illusion spells are generally made using….”

“I’m sorry sir, I do not know magic.”

“Then that needs to be corrected. But the answer is light. So, an area saturated in rain means we have water, humidity and then light, which I’ve reversed into darkness. The area out there is full of poison mist, nothing brazen, but it slowly saps their strength and puts them to sleep for my spiders.”

“Are you aware that Cast cannot be poisoned?”

“Yes, but they can be rusted. My spiders took the souls of the men they killed, once they have time to build up their mana reserves using these bodies, they can cast magic that should work.”

“And if not?”

“Then I already have hundreds of new soldiers who can use more normal magic, I have the golems from the town, and I have myself.”

“Would you really take to the field yourself?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

The last of the creatures, whose thorax was a crystal, entered into the dying body of their victim.

It panicked slightly when a warmage hurriedly walked past, but they paid no mind to the awkward movements of the body, just as Harlan suspected.

The false spinal spider knew it would take roughly an hour for the body to become saturated with this new power and act as a proper vessel for it.

It had been watching the patterns of the guard, knowing when they changed shifts, and trying to mimic the voice, they all found a single guard for this purpose, they expected to be able to take 400 bodies before anyone noticed, though with more resources, they would’ve taken over all of the guards, for just the night watch, it would be enough.

“Guardsman, report.”

“No signs of enemy movement.”

“Your voice sounds a bit odd.”

“Must be the cold and the mist.”

“Hmm. Go to a healer after your shift, we need everyone hale if we are to finish this without losing more resources than necessity.”

The golem sauluted incorrectly with a hand over the heart as one would in Ragne, but the Cast had already turned away.

An hour passed, the shifts were being shifted, and the attack would now begin in earnest.

With the night guards having been replaced, the holes could be expanded to allow the golems directly into the camp. They entered from the barracks tents around the camp so they would be hidden while they all got outside of the walls. Everyone else had already been silently killed in their sleep.

When they were ready, the guards went out to find and kill the mages who held the spatial lock.

Those already in the camp were a fraction of the total golems, they were sent as support in case things got loud before the lock was broken.

“Guard, this area is restricted to avoid breaking the concentration of-”

The stolen bodies, in this case, Minos, lacked the strength of the advanced models Harlan created from scratch, so they couldn’t just bash the Cast’s head in with one strike, but it was enough to put him off kilter and give time for the proper flesh golems to move in with imbibing giving them the strength to put their spear like hands at the end of its tentacles through the heart of a Cast who couldn’t deflect and had a hard surface behind him.

When the creature looked at its hand, it could see chips, its body wasn’t hard enough to continually kill them with physical ability and imbibing required a certain effort to have more than one effect at a time, which Harlan had not yet perfected for his creations.

Holding the spatial lock spell required 8 mages, all Cast, all holding the effect up after it had been cast.

When the first died due to a powerful acid spell after the rust spell failed, the a large area under the effect of the array was disrupted, allowing a gate to open in that section..

Harlan could’ve just broken through it without this little display, but pretending that he couldn’t gave him a card to play in the future.

Once they realized that the spell was being broken, the guards all rushed to defend the other mages, this was another part of the diversion. Once they were through the gate it didn’t matter where they really were, their job was to make noise and keep the soldiers protecting the gate mages.

Yet this was another layer of deception, the fog hid that the clouds overhead had regathered, and the sounds of chaos from battle stopped them from hearing the lightning until it was too late.

The armies pincered Harlan’s forces and while they waited for the order to rush in Harlan opened a gate again, and left the area.

Harlan was back in his home, overlooking the city and beyond the walls from its high hill.

“Joan, we see the last part of the plan. I’ve sown chaos, I’ve stopped them from pulling back or getting rid of my fog, and the army isn’t so spread out as it was earlier today. Eight points, eight bolts.”

Before the bolts came down, another spell covered the town, a massive veil to prevent the sounds from harming his citizens.

The heavenly fury spell was normally one bolt, and splitting the clouds above would distribute the power unevenly, Harlan disliked betting that he even could split them safely without an accidental discharge, so he had another way to do it.

The soldiers who spoke before were right, the lightning would hit the highest thing in the area, which was the flying thing.

Harlan made a golem whose only purpose was to burn up in the process of being hit by one bolt and splitting it in eight using a spell used to redirect lightning magic.

Though it would’ve been better to use skysteel due to elemental alignment, mythril was what he had, and he hoped it was both conductive enough and magically resistant enough that every piece of magic would be redirected instead of turning into a lump of molten steel half way through the process.

“Watch closely, this is how I fight, and back home, I know many people who are stronger than me.

The strongest are people who I can call good friends.”

The town shook as the bolts hit, and Harlan heard the clinging of metal, the mythril had not melted, but rather turned brittle and shattered, raining across the city. Harlan was glad he forced everyone to stay inside for the night, it wouldn’t be very nice to get complaints about people bleeding out in the street or losing an eye from the shrapnel that fell.

Joan had been knocked on her backside from shock.

“Holy shit.”

“Nothing holy has happened here.”

Another gate opened and the golems went back to pick off the survivors.

“In the morning we can assess damage to the town. And then I can get back to setting up the expansion. Food stores won’t last more than a few weeks at this rate, and I can’t spend the rest of my days hunting anything with a pulse in the area. Those snake men, how dangerous are they, and do they descend from humanity?”

Joan dusted herself off, though the room was spotless, and stood up.

“Their scales are made from gems, their claws are adamant, and they do not come from humans.”

“Do they have meat on them? And you are sure about the human part? Because I heard them described as cannibals.”

“They eat their own, and yes, they do bleed, so they have meat, though I’ve never seen one myself.”

“And what is adamant?”

“Deep iron, easy to mix with magical metals and nearly as hard as stonesteel but without the weight.”

“I want their bodies, they would make fantastic golems.”

“Thank goodness- I mean, very well, I did worry that you intended for us to eat them.”

“When we are in private, you are free to act casually. I want my people to be friends with me, because I want to trust them, and I want to trust that they know how to handle me though the hard parts of ruling.”

“Why me? Have you said the same to Mercedes?”

“I don’t trust her. I do trust you.”

“Again, why?”

“The riot, you handled that exactly how I wanted you too, and we never even shared a word.

Your gut reaction was that you should protect my citizens from my other citizens, you have that brand on your chest, and you didn’t come to me to have it removed like so many others, you know what those people know, you were a slave, but you still did the just thing, and you upheld my ruling that they are innocent.”

“You speak too highly of me.”

“Then prove me wrong, and fail me. Because everything that I have seen you do, and every report on and from you has told me the same thing, in your heart, you are who I want to protect this town, from enemies within, and without, and even from itself.”

She blushed, the red of her cheeks mixed with her blue skin turned her a shade of violet.

“You really do speak too highly of me, but I am a bit old for you.”

“I have a fiance, and I have no interest in betraying her trust.”

“You have a woman back home? How long until you bring her here? Or you go back?”

“I won’t go back until this is done, and she can’t come here.”

“She must be terribly lonely then.”

“She’ll… she’ll wait for me.”

“Does she know you are here? What about friends?”

“Godsdamnit. She knows, so she is never going to stop waiting. Because I wouldn’t go to someone else.

I’ll live forever until someone kills me, I won’t age past 25, but she… she’ll wait half of her life, waiting for me. Please, see yourself out, I need to think.”

“My apologies, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“No, you just made me realize what I’ve done to her, and she doesn’t deserve it.”

Once she was gone, Harlan went through his options, leaving was off the table, he couldn’t let this go, he would never be able to live with himself if he did.

Bringing her here would put her in unnecessary danger, he could act so freely because of the lack of possible backlash against his loved ones.

That other Harlan was there with her, but he knew that she wouldn’t go with him, no matter what argument he made, and he would make one, she would feel like she was betraying him.

The battle had ended at 3:48AM, but Harlan didn’t make a move until well after 7.

His eyes went black, and he found himself still sitting in his office.

“How peculiar, so I suppose you truly do consider this place important.”

“If my mindscape was my old home, it would just make me long for it. You know what I want, can it be done?”

“Actually, I don’t, with you and your double around, your threads weave themselves into knots all by themselves and I can’t see nearly as much as I once could.”

“I want you to make everyone forget that I am here, and I know that the other me told Adina that he isn’t the original, because I would do it. And I know that her being apart from him even when they are so close is just going to be painful for both sides until they finally split up and find other people to be with.”

“You would ask that I violate the minds of dozens for your sake?”

“What if Adina agrees? Would that change your mind at all?”

“Sepul knows, to change his memories would upset Cecht.”

“Fuck Cecht, that bastard tried to have me killed, and I’m sure Sepul would agree to this if I was the one doing it instead of you.”

A mass of feathers and eyes and light appeared in the office.

“Mind your tone when you speak to me.”

“I spoke about you, you overgrown canary. Learn the difference.”

“A foolish man is one who does not fear me.”

“And if you kill me, what do you think she is going to do to you?”

“She wouldn’t-”

“Oh I would. Now, why don’t we all calm down. Speak without threatening one another.”

“Very well. If your word becomes your bond, I would allow it, and the boy would owe me a favor.”

“I am fine with-”

“Harlan, turn that off.”

“What?”

“You are putting magic in your voice, it cannot harm or influence us, but it is seen as very rude among us who can perform such a thing.”

“I didn’t mean to do it. I don’t know how to stop.”

“Feel it as you speak, now that you know about it, you can stop it.”

Harlan vocalized and felt magic flow into his throat from his mind, it was something empathic in his case.

“I’m sorry Cecht, I did not mean to insult you in that manner.”

“Yes, I can see you are telling the truth, but your words hide another meaning. You meant to insult me in other ways?”

“In direct ways, not indirect ways. I am fine with owing you a favor, provided there are some simple rules.

I don’t kill children, you cannot force me to do something which would knowingly endanger my friends and family, and… I think that is everything.”

“And you cannot give my champion any order which violates my own orders or knowingly order him to do something which is likely to kill him. I don’t want you sending him to a den of wyverns in their breeding months.”

“These terms are acceptable. You may alter my champion’s memories for this boy's childish love.”

“You not understanding his love, or the power of it, but one of your issues.”

“I will remain unclouded in my mind. Those emotions are nothing but chaos.”

“A perfect order is perfectly unable to grow.”

“Should I be here for this conversation?”

From seven to noon, he rejected all meetings with the order that unless it was actually life and death, he did not want to be bothered. Dawn tried to soothe him, but Harlan wept the entire time.

He severed all connections, even if he did go back, Adina would be married to that other him, he would be the one who she loved, he would be the one who has children with her, he would be the one living the life he wanted.